"She might well," continued the garrulous lady. "Gramercy, but I would have done the like in the same case! ’Twas but two days—nay, methinks, but one—sithence all her Michaelmas gowns were home from the tailor, new fashioned and right fair—and now but to think of putting all away for a lot of dreary doole! Dear heart, but it were enough to aggrieve one! If there had not been at hand my Lord Charlton to divert her withal, methinks she should well-nigh have gone distraught! We shall hear of a wedding there, Mistress Wenteline, by my troth, so soon as this weary, dreary doole be but got o’er." Guenllian’s tongue required some hard discipline to keep it quiet. Could _he_ hear it through his coffin-lid,—that still sleeper in the hall beneath? Would he not almost stir upon his satin pillow, if this tale reached him of the utter apathy and heartlessness of the woman to whom he had given his heart’s best love, and to whom the news of his loss brought bitter regret—for the deferred wearing of her Michaelmas wardrobe? Guenllian severely schooled her heart down, and then said—as calmly as was in her warm Welsh nature—and as soon as a hiatus occurred in Lady Agnes’s persistent rattle— "Would it like your Ladyship to tell me what manner of man is this Lord Charlton? Shall he be one that should deal gently with the childre, or no?" For Guenllian’s heart yearned over her darlings, and especially over Anne. "Eh, good lack!" laughed Lady Agnes, "he shall neither make nor mell with them. My Lord Charlton is not he that should befool him a-laking with childre. ’Tis the mother he loveth, not them. And in good sooth, he is scantly the man for one of her high estate: but—there! you wit, Mistress Wenteline, love is a leveller." "Love?" said Guenllian inquiringly to her own heart—not to Lady Agnes. Ay, she knew, better than her companion could tell her, of what material Alianora was made. She was likely enough to "Crawl to the next shrub or bramble vile, Though from the cedar’s stately arm she fell." "And look you," pursued Lady Agnes, breaking in upon Guenllian’s sorrowful thoughts, "truly it hath been a great trouble unto my Lady, the coming down. She looked to be one day Queen of England, and should have been, had my sometime Lord (whom God pardon) been more wary and witful. Do but think, to aventure himself afore his army in an Irish habit—was it not thus he did? Any man with his wits in his head should have wist he might as well have writ his death-warrant. And now all that lost! Dear, dear, what a misaventure! Verily, I do think my Lady of March sore to pity, I warrant you. To lose a crown, and spoil an whole wardrobe, all of a blow—well, as to the losing her baron, the world holdeth more than one man—" Lady Agnes had found it so—"but in very deed it should sorrowfully grudge me to be in like case."